Before you cut loose
by Spirit-Animal-Jade
Summary: Jade West tries to get the hell out of most things. Call it an instinct. Now something is standing in her way, and she's considering doing something she doesn't have much experience in- staying. Endgame is Jade/Robbie. Heavy mentions of Beck/Jade.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Hi, so I hope this will be my first multi-chapter fic. I can make no promises about when I'll be updating because I'm a lazy little sod, but I will do it. Enjoy?

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'_I used to think one day they'd tell the story of us- how we met and the sparks fell instantly- but the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now.'- Taylor Swift, The Story Of Us_

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My breath spills out in front of my face, twisting into spirals and fogging in the cool night air, looking a lot like cigarette smoke as it slowly disappears. I wish I had a cigarette now, if only to distract myself from the look on his face as what I just said sinks in. Unfortunately, I gave up 3 months ago after ceaseless nagging from both Beck and my father. That might have to change. I miss the sensation of drawing the nicotine into my lungs, the brief moment of numbness it delivered. I need that now, but my back-up packet is sitting in the glove compartment of my battered Mustang, which is in the lot opposite. I'm not. Instead I'm standing outside The Black Box, with my leather jacket wrapped tightly around me, listening to other cars screech out of the lot as everyone leaves for the evening, after the play, their wheels spinning. Maybe I should have gone with them, left this for another day. I don't get scared, but I'm pretty damn nervous of his reaction right now. I stare stubbornly down at the concrete, picking out the un-even bits, the faded white lines, the odds and ends of student life that have been deposited here; hair ties, screwed up paper, broken pens with their cartridges bleeding out into the pavement, blue into black, like a faded bruise, sensitive and not yet healed. I can't meet his eyes, which I'm sure are watching me, or rather the top of my head. He's still not speaking.

He draws breath. It's long and shaky and rattles down his throat like it hurts him. It probably does. 'You don't think you love me anymore?' I shake my head, no. Does he really want me to repeat it? I doubt either of us could take that. How I wanted this to be quick, and simple, like ripping off a Band-Aid .You have to do it with speed or it hurts all that much more and the marks it leave can be worse than the injury ever was. That's what I thought- talk to him after his play, when he's happy, so at least he's still have something to cling to, to soften the blow so to speak, then do it quick. His play was good. He knows it. He also knows his relationship isn't.

For the first time I look up, and his brown eyes are wide. But his face looks set, and his jaw is locked, his lips set in a thin line. It's a look of resignation, I think. Neither of us speaks for a couple of seconds and I stay with my knee length laced up bootsrooted to the spot. He wants to say more, I can tell- you don't spend two years in a relationship with someone and not pick up their give-away signs, but he's undecided as to what, so I'll just wait for him to get his guts together to do it. I take the time to take in his clothing choice for the evening. His brown cowboy boots are scuffed from years of wear. I remember labelling them as stupid and pretentious when he first got them, cackling about how he doesn't have to look like a stereotypical drama student, and he better watch out because if he carries on wearing them and doesn't get his freaking hair cut soon people will start mistaking him for a girl. He was stubborn though, and refused to listen. I gave up after a while and the boots stayed. I think I've seen them every day since then, if not on his feet then stashed neatly away in a corner of his RV or slung in a corner of my room along with the rest of his stuff. I've even worn them a few times, because Beck despises my habit of driving bare footed, and he literally shoves them over the console and brandishes them in from of my face until I pull over and slip them on. Shoved, I guess I should say now. He won't be doing it again.

His shirt too is achingly familiar. It's red and black plaid. For a couple of months last year it resided in my closet because I used to steal it off him so often and wear it around his RV, usually with nothing but my underwear and just the first three buttons done up, that he'd made a fuss and declared I wore it so often it might as well be mine. I'd taken him at his word and promptly stole it the next time I visited his RV. If he noticed he didn't mind until one day at the end of summer, he's spilt fruit punch down his white shirt. I'd told him to walk home topless, that if he ran, and didn't stop and talk to anyone, especially cute girls, he'd be fine. He didn't take to my advice very kindly and eventually I'd marched upstairs with a huff and thrown the shirt down for him to put on. He'd kind of reclaimed it after that. My visits to his RV became fewer and I didn't need the shirt anymore, usually I just dressed and left soon after. I haven't seen it in a while. It's linked so firmly in my mind with evenings spent in his arms, the TV flickering in the background set to re-runs of long cancelled teen sit-coms that Beck seems to have an odd fetish for; and lazy mornings spent doing nothing but talking idly. I was wearing it when he asked if I'd thought about the future- what college I was thinking of after graduation, if I thought we should apply together, if I could see us together in another two years' time? I'd shrugged and told him that it was too far away yet, that I preferred to live in the present. Life's more exciting that way. Planning was for old people. The shirt is so connected to 'The Story of Beck and Jade' that it's only fitting it should be present for the last chapter.

The wind twists the ends of my blue hair extensions in its fingers and Beck speaks again, finally.

'Do I get to ask why?' His mouth is skewed to the side, like he's making the effort to not grimace and it's not quite working. Instead his face looks pained and against popular belief, I do have a heart and it twinges at the sight. I don't want to hurt Beck, I really don't, but we've been pretending for far too long, and he must know that. I'm just putting an end to it now before it gets seriously out of control, before it takes us both down to levels we can't recover from.

'You know why, Beck. It hasn't been right for a while, since the beginning of term. How much of this is just routine for you now?' I ask him bluntly and watch carefully as he blanches but doesn't answer right away. If I were wrong he would be protesting right about now. If I were wrong, he'd be stepping forward and stroking my hair and kissing my forehead. He's not. Instead he stares at me for a second and his hands shift uneasily at his sides.

'…I don't know what to say.' That's Beck, ever expressive. I sigh and again my breath curls away from me, into the darkening night, and the only way I can see Beck is by the illumination from the street light near us, bathing us both in an orange glow, like something out of my zombie movies. It makes Beck's usually dark skin look pale and drained. I must look positively like a ghost. I just shrug in response; to be honest we were never very good with communication. That was why we always resorted to text fighting, like some stereotypical teenage couple. When I screamed, Beck would either ignore me or just scream back.

'Jade, are you sure about this? We've broken up before. Who's to say we won't be back together next month?'

I grit my teeth in irritation; I wanted him to take this seriously. 'I mean it this time.' My short answer seems to shock him, it was spoken with a lot of force, and his eyebrows furrow in….confusion?

'So this is it?' I nod. Slowly.

'Don't tell me you didn't see this coming, Beck. I know you did. We haven't seen each other much recently, and when we do, the most we do is make out so we can avoid any form of conversation or start a screaming match. You're constantly annoyed at me, and you're irritating me too and I'm sick of it. It's gone beyond any jealousy you think I have. What we have- it's not good, Beck.'

This time he doesn't seem affected by my frankness. He should have built up immunity by now anyhow. I can already feel him letting go, he's slipping through my fingers, like water, and I don't try and stop it this time. I just let him, because I've become tired of the fighting too. He steps forward and for a moment I think he's going to try and shake me or something and I'm so confused but then he dips his head to meet mine and it ends with a slight kiss. It's too quick for even me to react and he's already stepping back with a small sad smile on his face. I must look pretty confused still because he shrugs deeply and says: 'I must admit, I didn't think we'd break up like this, I thought we'd at least go out with a bang or something.' He shoves his hand deep in his jean pocket. 'I don't know which I prefer.'

I know what he's talking about it. I never thought I'd be the one doing the breaking-up either, but time changes, and apparently so do people, otherwise we wouldn't be in this mess. I've changed. This relationship has too and as much as I thought maybe we'd have a huge argument and that would be it, right now that sounds like a lot of effort and pain, and whilst I like pain, that wouldn't be the good kind, and I like this method better. I'm sure Beck will realise he does too. I mean, it's less pain for both of us, isn't it?

'Isn't this more healthy?' I ask and he shrugs again.

'We were never the healthiest of couples though.' True, the boy has a point. 'You sure you don't want to think about it. We can work through it, Jade.'

I know he's not serious, I know he's only saying it because he feels he has to. Beck always wants to say the right things. Comes with being an actor, I suppose. The streetlight flickers and for a second I lose sight of his face. I find it easier to say my next words because of this.

'Trust me Beck, we're through. I don't want this relationship anymore. I'm fed up with you paying me so little attention. I'm fed up with you putting up with advances from other girls. I'm fed up with us not talking. Just let it go.' My voice is low, and try as I might, I can't control the bitterness anymore, it seeps through and cracks my words in the middle with its acid.

A moment of silence, then- 'Fine. If that's the way you feel.'

'It is,' I grit out.

Again, all the fight seems to leave Beck's body and he pushes his other hand in the matching pocket and rocks back on his heels cautiously. 'I guess…we're over. I'll see you around Jade. But don't like talk to me too soon okay? I just- don't.'

I just nod and even turn to leave, not wanting to stay any longer in this suffocating atmosphere of awkwardness, my black velvet skirt swishing around my waist, before I suddenly remember and call after Beck's already retreating figure. 'You're not going to Cat's party?' Cat is hosting a house party the next day in aid of celebrating her half-birthday. She begged us for weeks to come until we all eventually caved, and stopped telling her a half-birthday is no reason to throw a massive party, and promised we'd be there. I wondered if now Beck was planning to avoid it.

'I don't know. I don't want to hurt Cat. I might make an appearance.'

I nod again and this time Beck turns away first and strides towards his truck. It feels odd not to be following him and climbing in to ride shotgun next to him, fiddling with the stereo knobs until they hit my favourite station. I watch him for a while until he enters the cab and his engine roars to life. I fish my keys out of my messenger bag and head off in the direction of my car and sigh in relief when the headlight's flash after I press the unlock button. I'd forgotten where I'd parked it. I climb in wearily, slinging my bag onto the passenger seat and yanking the glove box open. It takes me a couple of seconds to find the cigarettes lurking in the back but when I find them I grab them gratefully.

I light the cigarette and take a long drag, closing my eyes in contentment when the nicotine enters my lungs and exhaling slowly as I watch the smoke blow in rings into my car interior. Reluctantly I crank the driver window down so it can escape and hang my hand out of the window so as not to get ash on the seat. It may be my car, but my father would kill me. I flick on my stereo and the familiar crashing of guitar rocks my car as Nirvana's live album starts and Cobain's scratchy voice bleeds through the speakers, into my ears. I listen as Kurt screams about heart shaped boxes and the volume is far too loud for this deserted parking lot, but frankly, I don't give one. The music and the cigarette are keeping me from thinking too hard about the decision I just made, and whether it was the right one. The pounding drums infiltrate my head until I can't tell whether it's the stereo or my heartbeat because both are pretty loud right now, and everything else is so quiet. I'm sure if I switched off the music all I would hear is the rattling of my own breath and the beating of my own heart. Alone, because that was what I was now.

Eventually I finish my cigarette and flick the butt out the window and watch it smoulder on the concrete for a few seconds before it flickers out. I stop myself from making stupid parallels between the dying embers and mine and Beck's relationship by throwing the car into reverse and pulling out of the lot and turning left onto the road. If I was going to Beck's, I'd be turning right. But I'm not. The music has changed by now and Kurt has actually been replaced by the crooning voice of his widowed wife, as Hole is playing. It's one of their few slow songs and Love's voice wheedles out the chorus almost painfully. Sometimes I wonder why I like this kind of music.

_Remember you promised me,  
I'm dying, I'm dying, please  
I want to, I need to feel  
Under your skin._

Beck's face flashes before my eyes and I slam the off button on the cd with my whole fist and Courtney Love is abruptly shut off. I drive the rest of the way in home in silence. I run through a few stoplights but the roads are deserted and there's no one out here to catch me, so I don't care. The journey from school to home only takes twenty minutes and the roads fly past in blurred streaks of orange, grey and black all running in to each other outside my car window. I'm probably speeding too, but I can't bring myself to care about getting at ticket for that either. The sad fact is I don't care about much really, anymore.

The gravel crunches under my wheels as I pull into the drive-way. The porch light is on but none of the rest of the house is illuminated at all. My mother isn't home. Not like I expected her to be. The last time I saw her was last week, for a brief couple of seconds as we passed in the hallway. I was heading to the kitchen and she was off to somewhere on the third floor. She didn't make an appearance after, and I slammed the door on my way out. I don't even know if she heard. I unlock the door then sling my keys into the glass bowl on the table intended exactly for that purpose. Both mother's keys and car keys are gone, so it means she won't be back for a while. At least definitely not tonight. Sometimes I wonder if she plans these things so as to avoid me as much as possible, to try and ignore the fact she's got a bitter twisted arts kid as a daughter instead of a lawyer-in-training like she wanted. How must she live with the disappointment I cause?

I consider getting something to eat from the fridge, I know I should, I missed lunch and that was over 7 hours ago- the red clock from the oven blinks that's it 22; 15pm, but I find my appetite is lacking and I trudge upstairs to my room, kicking off my boots as I enter. I don't turn the light on immediately and all the jars I've filled with the stuff I've collected from over the years, like the lump I took from the hospital, and painted with glow in the dark paint, loom out of the darkness. Turning my bedside lamp on I collapse on the bed and shrug off my top and skirt. I don't even have the energy to find some night clothes before I crawl under the covers so I settle for my underwear.

When I shut out my lamp the light from the street filters through my flimsy curtains and I think about how I used to lie in Beck's RV when he was asleep, just watching the little stars the LA night life allowed sparkle in the sky. I used to watch the streetlights across the road flicker out and then wait until they came on again around 4am. I used to do this in Beck's arms. I won't be doing it again. Tears prick at the corners of my eyes but I don't allow them to progress any further. Jade West does not cry. It's a weakness and vulnerability and I am not vulnerable, ever. But the image of Beck lying in his small bed watching the same stars I used to has crept behind my eyelids. Maybe he's staring outside, remembering those nights too. Beck was safe, Beck was normal; Beck was reliable if anything else. Why am I acting like the hurt party here when I'm the one who made the decision? Call it off before it fizzles out completely; call it off before we end up seriously hurting each-other., that's what I thought. I miss him but I miss what he represents more- we've always been BeckandJade, this one entity. Oh god, what if he's crying too? I can't handle this. My eyes begin to sting again and I squeeze them closed. I hope he knows this wasn't easy.

I fall asleep with Beck's face and thoughts of tomorrow's party flashing though my mind.

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AN: Reviews are love, and like they say, love makes the world go round. Or that might be chocolate. Same thing. Anyway, thoughts?


	2. Chapter 2

_'And these fights, they climb through my veins like its mercury rising, and these nights, I seem to remember a home that was better' - Something Corporate, Not What It Seems_

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I don't get up until it's past twelve and my phone burbles loudly, seemingly straight into my ear. I can't believe I've slept that long. I roll out of bed groaning. My clothes are wrinkled and creased from where they've ridden up while I've been sleeping and I begin to regret not getting changed before collapsing last night. My phone falls out of the maze of bedding and pillows on my bed as I get up. I pick it up, rubbing my eyes, and look at it dispassionately. 3 messages from Cat, all in a state of hyper activity about this evening; one from Tori, which I half consider ignoring, asking for a lift there seeing as she still hasn't managed to not completely bomb a driving test yet; and one from Robbie wondering if he should wear a tie. I rattle off a few messages to Cat, telling her to calm the fuck down, grudgingly agree to Tori and decide to click delete on Robbie's message. The boy will figure it out, and if he does turn up in a tie it will set him up for my teasing for the rest of the night.

There are none from Beck. I don't know what I expected. I toss my phone back onto the bed.

The house is still silent and empty when I stick my head out of the door and I find myself breathing a sigh of relief. I can't deal with my mother's interrogation right now, or her awkward conversation over breakfast. She won't be interested in anything I have to say anyway and I figured she stopped listening years ago; when she lost interest in me as her daughter; when I chose what I wanted to do with my life and it didn't quite meet up to her successful, hot-shot city girl lawyer expectations. My mother doesn't like being proved wrong and now I am a constant reminder of how she has failed. Maybe that's why she avoids this house like it's got a red x painted over the front door.

Anyway, I'm grateful at least for having the excuse for no conversation. Right now, I'm also not looking forward to tonight, and it's looming in the near future ominously. I sigh, I don't want to see people, make stupid small talk, or pretend that the inevitable atmosphere of awkwardness between me and Beck isn't there. I don't want to see his face and be swept over by an overwhelming sense of guilt, don't want to have to explain to my friends what happened and assure them that 'no, everything's fine', don't want to see him pursue Vega now that I'm not standing in his way anymore, or his stupid sense of self-righteousness.

I don't want to do anything.

Unfortunately, I know that's not possible, so I drag myself to the bathroom, pulling pins out of my hair from how I fixed it last night, and dropping them to the floor to create a Hansel and Gretel like trail for my mother to find later and fume about. I turn the shower on full power and the highest temperature it can go and stand beneath it frozen for a while, just feeling it run down my back and scald my skin and burn feeling into me again. The heat is scorching. The water feels like its branding me but I like it- it blocks out everything else, means I don't have to think of anything apart from the boiling water slamming into me. I want it to get it hotter hotter until maybe, like the steam, I'll just evaporate too.

Eventually when my skin is clean and the bathroom is foggy I climb out and shiver in the polar conditions of the rest of the house. I dress in black jeans and a cami, grab my docs and my leather jacket, and walk out of the house. I need coffee, good coffee, and I need it now.

/

The queue at Skybucks is obnoxiously long when I arrive. I sigh and tap my foot impatiently until I reach the counter and the barista looks scared at the murderous expression on my face and the way I bark out my order. I consider taking my vanilla latte to a booth and sitting down but I'm not risking bumping into anyone that I know so I stalk out. My feet carry me forward without any real direction until I finds myself outside of a building I vaguely recognise about twenty blocks down. It's only when a familiar head of gravity defying hair pops out of a upstairs window that I realise just where I am.

'Jade?'

'Oh hey, Shapiro,' I respond unenthusiastically. He's seen me now and speed walking in the other direction would be a little ruder than I think I can get away with. He's a freak, and crushed pretty easily. Besides, he deals with enough pain with his very much unrequited love of Cat for me to add any more right now.

'Wait there!' he cries out, and his black bushy hair disappears for a couple of seconds before the front door is thrown open and he's standing in the doorway grinning. I roll my eyes.

'Hi.'

'What are you doing? You _never_ come to visit me. Do you want to come in or something?'

'Uhh…sure.' There really is no way out. I down the rest of my coffee then flip the empty cardboard cup into a nearby trash can. Robbie's house is big, but not as big as mine. It's sparsely decorated and everything has the uncomfortable aura of being spotlessly clean. If I ran a finger down the banister I'm pretty certain I wouldn't pick up a particle of dust. My house is just the opposite, stuff left everywhere because my mother has mind only for her work. I leave debris just to frustrate her. Robbie shuffles his feet awkwardly as I glance around his home. There's some sort of muffled pop punk group being blasted from a room upstairs and I go to ask who it is, but Robbie shrugs.

'My sister's home and we haven't sound proofed her room yet. Uhh, about the house, my Mom's a bit of a neat freak so…' he trails off and I shrug myself.

'It's cool. Better than mine.'

I realise that if one of us doesn't move then we're going to spend the rest of our lives standing awkwardly in this hallway, so I kick of my boots and start upstairs, eager to get to Robbie's room if I'm going to stay here for a bit, and avoid all adults that may be lurking downstairs. Robbie scurries after me and I try (not very hard) to suppress a laugh when we enter his room. It's bright blue and covered in star wars merchandise, and like downstairs, everything is precisely in place. His bed is immaculately made with its Luke Skywalker bedcover, and Rex sits on a chair in the corner looking eerily dead. Robbie doesn't go to pick him up, which relieves me. The overall effect is that a twelve year old boy lives here, not a teenager.

'Seriously Shapiro? Star wars?' My smirk is probably very evident and Robbie's cheeks heat up.

'Hey, it's a classic, award-winning series! With one of the biggest plot twists in movie history!'

'Oh, please,' I scoff, rolling my eyes. 'I am your father?' So predictable.'

'It was not! It was the work of a great scriptwriter, who-'

'Whatever' I cut him off and sit down on the edge of his bed while he remains standing hovering in the doorway of his own room, looking nervous. 'You can come in, you know.'

'Right.'

He sits at his desk chair, possibly as far away from the bed that he can get and eyes me warily. I, in turn, resist the urge to scream. I'm not going to bite his head off, not today, and I could really do with some conversation that might just take my mind off wondering what Beck is doing, and what he's feeling, and if he's thinking about me, and did I make the right decision, and should it hurt this much and on and on and on. I don't have to try with Shapiro, he's just as much of a freak as I am but would never let anyone know. I just want some time where I don't have to care about anything much at all.

'Are you going to talk to me, or did you invite me in so you could look at me like I'm about to fire a bullet through your brain?'

He swallows and smiles weakly at my sarcasm. 'It's just you're never around my part of town. Beck's is over the other side, and we usually hang around Tori's, and I thought you and Beck had plans today?'

I wince when I realise he's right. We were going to go to the cinema to see the latest paranormal activity film, so Beck could get scared and pretend he wasn't, and so I could sit and mock the entire thing from beginning to finish. I'd forgotten, and had only mentioned it once at lunch a couple of days ago in some off-hand comment, and I'm pretty sure Beck hadn't a clue I wanted to go. That's how much commitment to the relationship we'd sunk down to, that our friends knew more than we did. It was sad really.

Robbie seems to notice the change in my expression, the wrinkles in my forehead, and he frowns at me. 'Jade, are you and Beck alright? I mean, you're here and he's not and I know you don't exactly like me, and-'

I'd also forgotten how perceptive but equally pathetic Robbie was. 'Shapiro, I'm mean to everyone.' I take a breath in. 'Beck and I broke up.' It seems so stark, out there in the open, so blunt and irreversible. I'm not sure I like it. It feels real now, not something just between the two of us that we can change- forget and kiss and make up like we usually do. Not something we can ignore and pretend like it never happened, like most of our fights. This is it, it's done, and now people know.

Robbie stares at me.

'Like for real?'

'Yes. For real this time.'

I'm going to get this reaction a lot, I know- people not taking me seriously. Because that's what Beck and I did- we fought and broke up time and time again and it didn't mean anything, that was just how we worked, and we loved each other really, underneath all the screaming matches and cold shoulders and every other god damn fight.

Or did we?

'Oh.' There's a semi-awkward pause. 'Are you okay?' he asks.

I nod. I'm fine. It was my decision anyway, right? I should deal with this. I _can_ deal with this.

'The text? Don't wear the tie. Just don't, Shapiro.'

Robbie blinks at me for a second, then seems to catch on to my abrupt change of subject and fumbles for words to defend himself.

'Why not? It'll look smart I'll-'

'Shapiro, you'll either look like you're attending a freaking funeral and turned up dressed grossly inappropriately, or you'll look like you wandered into the wrong wedding reception. It's just a party. No tie, period.'

'Fine.'

'Well, do you want to sit here staring at each other, or do you want to actually do something?'

'Jade, are you sure you're…I mean we can talk about-'

'No. Now put the tele on or something. Christ, you need to learn when to shut up, Shapiro.'

He flinches at the sudden venom in my voice and cringes away from me. I almost feel bad. 'Sorry' he mumbles, and reaches over to flick the small ancient TV on his desk on. For the next couple of hours we watch cartoons on some random kids network and I roll my eyes when he sits on the remote and the Spanish subtitles get stuck showing, so we talk along in Spanish instead and I laugh a couple of times when Robbie pronounces something completely wrong and he smiles at me when I correct him. When I leave to get ready for Cat's I realise I've been there nearly four hours and it feels weird to know I spent that much time alone with Robbie without wanting to take a baseball bat to his head or something.

I tell him I'll see him later and he watches me walk down the drive until I disappear behind the hedge round his house.

/

Jessica West is not a very good mother. I know this, but yet she is a far better parent than my father, and that's saying something. Michael West made a mistake three years ago when he married an air-head, controlling, useless, superficial and sponging blonde women without any of his family's (mine) blessing. And now there is women in the world parading around in designer clothes, addressing herself as my 'step-mother.'

Their apparent romance was whirlwind and within the space of one year my mother had moved out and this new women had moved in, a slim gold band already sparkling on her left hand. We had had no choice in the matter. My mother had discovered them in bed together one sunday morning after coming home from a business trip. It was so fucking cliche, and what was worse was that I was in the house at the time. Twelve years old and told in a hushed and frantic whisper to stop me crying out at the strange women in my house, a hand in my hair nervously stroking my head- _don't tell mommy darling_. I wasn't stupid, I knew what was going on. I could have lessened her mother's heartbreak by telling her first, I sometimes think. But would that be worse? Being told by your own almost-teenage daughter about your cheating husband like you had no control, or hold over your own life anymore? Either way, my mother left and took me with her, and the rest, as they say, is bad blood, messy legal papers and angry court procedures.

I think she'd like to imagine the whole marriage never happened, at any cost. Even if it means forgetting her child most days of the year. Maybe that's another reason why she hates me- I'm a constant reminder of the one thing in life she couldn't keep and make perfect- her marriage. And now she has to admit that my father has found someone 'better' than her, and my mother hates being second best. It goes against every nerve in her body and I walk around her house reminding of her of the one thing she failed in and maybe that's why she looks at me like she'd rather I faded into the floor.

Love, I decided very early on, is bullshit.

I think of Beck and stick my key into the door.

/

Inside, I'm very surprised to see my mother walking down the stairs in a long violet evening dress, her hair immaculately styled in a neat up-do. I grit my teeth when she brushes past me, hooking an earring into her ear and muttering about her handbag, whilst doing her best to ignore the fact that I'm staring in the hall and glaring at her. I cough pointedly. She whirls around from where she's been fishing in her handbag and faces me, an eyebrow raised. Sometimes, I understand where I get my mannerisms from, and I hate the fact that she and I are more alike than I'd care to admit.

'Yes, hello. It's your daughter.' Sarcasm drips from my tongue. She doesn't seem to appreciate it.

'Don't try to be smart with me Jadelyn. And can't you see that I'm getting ready to go out? Not that you bother yourself with my life.' I almost laugh in her face at the irony of it all. I don't think she bothered to even learn Beck's name until we were together for a year and I've spent more nights at his place than I have home recently and she hasn't asked about it _once_. Because she does't care. As long as I don't wind up in hospital or on reality tv she couldn't give a fuck. 'And where were you all day?'

She's not actually interested, of course. 'Out.'

'Out where?' I pause in climbing the stairs and wince at the dangerously high pitched tone of her voice. I curl my hand around the stairs banister tightly to try and block her nasal voice out. Her heavy jewellery jangles as she steps forward, her eyebrows drawn into a a tight frown.

'I was just out. And I have a party this evening, so don't expect me home. Why are you so dolled up then? Did God perform a miracle and you finally got a date?'

She makes a harrumph of irritation and adjusts the bracelets on her wrist and checks her brunette curls in the hall mirror. 'I'm going to a corporate dining event.'

I laugh darkly. 'Of course. It's work work work isn't it? You have fun drinking cheap champagne Mom and trying to look important.'

'Jadelyn, less of your lip!' She aims me a glare but I roll my eyes.

'Anything else, Mom?'

'Who's party is it?' she asks sharply.

'Cat's.'

'The red-haired girl?'

My mother and Cat have met countless times but still she can't find it in that apparently over-loaded head of hers to remember any of my friends, their names, or the slightest detail about them. And she wonders why I never tell her anything. There would be no point. 'Yes' I grit out, already starting up the stairs again, my combat boots leaving nice black marks in the cream carpet.

'Jade, don't walk away from me!'

'Have fun tonight Mom. I won't text you!' I call over my shoulder as she glowers up at me from the foot of her stairs. Her cheeks look oddly flushed with the layer of blusher she's put on and the conversation we've just had. There'a vein pulsing in her forehead and her hair is beginning to escape from its pins. She looks like she's about to add something more so I run up the rest of the stairs and kick open my door and go straight to my wardrobe, flinging it open.

The front door slams downstairs.

There's a lot of black in my wardrobe. Black is good. Black is dark and angry and black is a warning to stay away. Black is what I need right now.

* * *

AN: So you got your first glance of Robbie. No Rade yet, I'm afraid you're in for the long haul, friends. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. I'm taking them as my valentine's day presents...


	3. Chapter 3

_'Take away the sensation inside, bitter sweet migraine in my head, it's like a throbbing tooth ache of the mind. I can't take this feeling anymore'- Green day, Give Me Novocaine._

* * *

Caffeine and alcohol are a lot alike, I decide. They wake nerve endings up, stream through your veins and burn up your bloodstream. But caffeine only keeps you awake at night; it doesn't cloud your mind or your ability to look at things rationally, doesn't take away your judgement on things you really _really_ shouldn't be doing. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. There's a roaring in my ears I can't shake out.

Somehow, I've managed to get myself in the middle of this make shift dance floor, which is really Cat's living room with the furniture pushed to the side, and colours are spinning and blurring around my head and voices are echoing around me and the music is loud loud loud. I can only just identify Cat by her fiery hair wrapped up in some boy who's head looks too big and his arms too long, sandwiched in a corner together. My head is swimming. I don't know where anyone else is.

Except for him. We've been like this for a while now.

His hand is on my hip, fiery touches on my bare skin and the cut out of my black dress, feather light and velvet soft. It feels like the only thing holding me down, anchoring me, but also tying me to this building. If he lets go I'm scared I'll just float away to become an invisible speck in the dark night outside, blending in with the stars. never to be seen again. How tripped out am I? But he's not letting go, just tiny stokes of my skin burning like lasers and hitting like tazers, keeping me in his grasp.

It's driving me mad and the only coherent thought I have is repeating in my head like a siren on loop, _get out get out get out_. But I can't. I can feel his short sharp breaths on my neck, rolling over my shoulders, and the scratchy material of his faded and patched jeans on my legs, rubbing ever so slightly. The beat is madding and so is what we're doing, and I can feel the heat inside me, ratcheting up a notch every minute that goes by until I'm gasping. The music picks up a bit, guitars crashing, and he moves his other hand to my stomach, rubbing small circles, showing possession, and we carry on grinding. _Get out get out, _but I'm stuck in this position, in some sort of trance, and it feels so good, familiar and hot and heavy all at the same time. I'm pretending I can't feel how worked up he is behind me.

The music pounds in time with my head. _Get out get out get out. _Then the song changes and the brief second of silence is just enough to bring to my senses.

I twist in his grasp to find his eyes are closed and his messy long brown hair is falling over his face, strands soaked with sweat. He runs his hands up my body higher, over my hips and up the curve of my waist, and he's so so close.

Until I take a step away and his eyes pop open at the lack of skin on skin contact. They're wide and hazy. Either someone's slipped him something or he's done this all on his own. High as a fucking kite. I have to practically scream to make myself heard over the music. "Beck, what are we doing?" My voice is raspy. He pauses a second to flick some hair out of his eyes.

"Dancing?"

"Beck, we're practically going at it in the middle of Cat's house. And we broke up!"

"You didn't seem to care ten minutes ago." He tries to grab hold of me again and I shimmy out of his way. He looks frustrated, like he can't understand what's happening. I don't know what's going on in his drug addled brain, but to be fair I don't know what mine is doing either. The room lurches around me.

"Just quit it, Beck!"

"Jade, come on!" he whines out, "Just forget it and dance."

"You see? I'm not just forgetting it this time Beck. How many times has this happened? I'll wake up tomorrow morning in your RV and we'll get dressed in silence and then try and pretend like we don't only really love each other when something's fucking with our minds!"

"I want you, Jade." He shouts, raking a hand through his precious hair and attempting to smile, one that doesn't quite reach his spaced out eyes.

"I don't give a fuck what you want anymore, Beck. I can't talk to you while you're playing in the clouds."

"You're being stupid, just-"

"Don't call me fucking stupid! No!"

I walk away from him then, surprising even myself with the way I manage to keep upright in the freaking impractical heels I chose for the evening, tall and spiky, covered in silver studs. I feel as though they don't support my weight anymore, something's dragging my shoulders down and there's a magnet in my back attached to Beck's hands, but I keep on walking, fighting against it. Out of the room, out of the house, until I'm standing on the front porch gasping for air like a fin out of water and feeling my head thump like it's alive in its own right and trying to break out of my skull.

I note with distaste that Vega's out here too. Isn't it enough that I gave her a ride here this evening? She sat in the car which her hands firmly in her lap, while I pretended to be immersed in twiddling the radio dials the whole way here, just so I could avoid conversation, and now she seems to be following me about. She's sitting on the steps of the house with a glass of coke in her hand and she looks quickly up at me when I stagger outside. She freezes, then pats the space next to her. I consider her for a couple of seconds, thinking about finding somewhere else, but my legs and head are protesting, so I slump down next to her.

"So" she says, not quite looking at me in the eye.

I'd managed to go the whole evening without talking to people, without mentioning Beck, without seeing Robbie stare at me apologetically, without any depressingly awkward moments creeping up between Beck and I. Mainly because I avoided him like the plague, fuelling myself with cup and cups of beer and whisky american until I didn't know what I was doing or where my head was at and who was passing me the alcohol. So it was going pretty well in my book. Until Beck and I went straight past awkward and he dragged me onto the dance floor with a couple of honey-covered words, and I couldn't get it into my own mind to refuse. And it all went to shit, and now I'm out here apparently having a conversation with Tori, when I feel like I want to jump under a bus and die.

"So?" I reply flatly and she glances at me quickly, before taking another sip of her coke and swallowing. She takes a frustratingly long time to speak again, and I almost get up and leave. I don't want to be here, so why should I stay? It's bitingly cold and I rub my arms to stop the goosebumps forming there.

"I heard about you and Beck ending." Oh here we fucking go. I grit my teeth. _I don't want to think about it._

"Yeah well, you can forget it. Going after a friend's ex-boyfriend is cheap and nasty and against like a thousand codes. So get the idea out of your head, Vega" I spit. Surprisingly she just ignores the venom dripping from my tongue and gives me a slight sugary anti-dotal smile in return. I frown, both at her and myself. _Why am I still bothered? _My own words echo back at me, '_Just let go, Beck.' _So why can't we?

"Like friends codes?"

"What?"

"Like the 'don't date your friend's ex-boyfriend' code?"

"Yes, so what?" I can't be arssed to sit out here and have this conversation with her, I'm not in the fucking mood.

"So you admit we are friends then?" Oh Christ, she backed me into that one. I look at her and the silver dress she's wearing and the stupid look of concern she's got painted all over her pretty cheekbones, and I wonder why she's sitting out here all alone. When you look past her irritating tendencies, she's…bearable. I give her credit, she _cares_. I nod begrudgingly. She gives me a radiant smile.

"Listen, Jade, I don't know where you got the idea that I like Beck. We're friends sure, but I only kissed him to get back at you, and I don't want to do that anymore. He would never and I would never…" she trails off, but I nod tightly anyway. She seems to get that I accept her kind-of apology for all those years ago. There's a pause where she swirls her coke around her glass a little and I begin to crave a cigarette, to calm me down and sort whatever feelings are fucking with my head out, but I know that's not going to help me any. Tori speaks again and I attempt to push it to the back of my mind and snap my attention back to her.

"So I also saw you two back in there." Oh.

"That wasn't meant to happen."

"I kinda got that, now you're out here and looking like you want to hit your head against a brick wall." This is so odd. I feel like our roles have been reversed or something. I don't reply.

"You gotta just cut yourself out, Jade." She says quietly, sombrely. "I know it's difficult."

"I know that Vega." My reply is harsh, I know, But I feel like I've at least got to keep some of my defences up. Vega's got awfully good at breaking them down lately.

"Good."

I shuffle away from her on the steps a little, trying to reassert some boundaries, and dig in my bag for a lighter and a cigarette, pulling them out with a flourish and lighting one up. I've decided I don't care about the state I might get myself in. Life is for living, anyway and who the fuck cares what happens along the way? Tori raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. I blow a puff of smoke into the night and watch it hang there for a second before it dissipates, turning to the girl beside me, letting the ash from the cigarette fall away from the both of us onto the lower step.

"So why are you out here Tori?"

"Cat." she groans, pushing her fly-away hair behind her ears.

"Cat?" I ask. What the hell did Cat do to drive Tori out of the party? I pull my eyebrows into a frown and eye Tori, waiting for her to explain. She sighs.

"Cat invited a load of guys that she used to date, and she ended up hooking up with one of them, right in front of Robbie, when he was just done chatting to her" She pauses. Well it explains the load of guys I didn't recognise here this evening. Cat never did have her head screwed on right, and now she's got a bunch of practical strangers she dated for a couple of days trashing her house. Tori bites her lip and continues.

"Well, you know Robbie, and how he gets. I think he stopped breathing for a bit. I found him muttering to himself in a corner, just watching her. He looked like the world was ending or something. He said he wanted to go home. I tried to tell him Cat was drunk, that's why, but to be honest, I just really don't think she's interested."

"She's not."

Tori just her chin out. "Well, Robbie looked really upset. She should just tell him that."

"Does he not get the picture when she's making out with other guys?"

"Jade!"

"Well…" Personally, I think Cat is just oblivious to Robbie's plight. I take another drag on my cigarette and then flick the ash into the air, watching it sparkle orange against the sky as I think. I remember him earlier today, sitting on his bed with him and laughing at cartoons. It was, dare I say it, _nice_. But it was so Robbie, so boyish, so _not _Cat. She's not going to pay even the slightest attention to him when he mopes around or yaps at people like he did me, all over enthusiastic. Cat's had too many guys for that, dates them for couple of days, lures them in with her cuteness and the sugariness of her smile, and they always end with the heart shattered on the floor like it's not even her fault. She doesn't get it, I think, relationships. Doesn't understand what a proper one is-that they're meant to last, she just skips along to the next one, like she she's done nothing wrong. If only Robbie would talk to her, be fucking blatant about it. He either needs to man up and move on, or do something more concrete than staring after her like a morose puppy dog all the time. "So, did he go home?" I ask. Tori nods.

"Yeah, I came outside with him and made him calm down before he drove home. He didn't drink so I figured it was safe, but I'm still really worried about him." She bites her lip again and I roll my eyes.

"Vega, he'll be fine."

"Yeah." she replies vaguely, but she still looks worried. For some strange reason I find myself trying to console her.

"Look he'll drive home, get back perfectly safe, and then maybe find some space in that huge head of his to realise that going after Cat is pointless, huh?"

"I hope so, he deserves someone who treats him right."

"I'm not sure Cat understands." I say, and Tori shrugs.

"I suppose. I was going to go back to the party now, I stayed out here to clear my head. I don't suppose you going to come with me, are you?"

I think of Beck waiting for me inside and the music thumping inside of my head again, and how badly I'll want to grab another beer and sink it in two seconds flat, just to get the buzz in my bloodstream to get through it. It takes a lot these days. About Cat and how i'll have to watch her happily playing tonsil hockey with some dude I don't know, about how Beck will keep watching me for the rest of the night, eyes burning into the back of my head like a red hot poker wherever I'm standing, and how I so badly just want to go home and forget everything happened, just for a little while.

"Nah, not with you." Got to keep up appearances, after all.

Tori raises her eyebrows at me but looks concerned still and I sigh and stub out my fading cigarette on the step I'm still sitting on, grinding it into the concrete.

"How are you getting home Jade? You can't drive like this."

"I'm perfectly in possession of my own mind, thank you." Okay, so I'm not, I'm pretty sure this whole conversation has been slightly slurred, but I'm getting tired of Tori now and I just want her to scurry back to the party and carry on being the good-two-shoes that she is, without bothering me anymore. I'd figure something out, maybe get one of the guys inside to drive me home. It's not like it would be difficult. It's not something I particularly enjoy doing, using my looks to reel people in, and you'd think I'be okay with it, but it makes me feel cheap sometimes. Still, it gets me what I want, be it a lighter, or anything else. So i'll find some sleazy guy that doesn't care I'm Beck's ex and bat my eyelashes a bit and flash a centimetre of cleavage, and boom, I'll have a lift home. Sounds perfect. At least Tori would stop hovering over me like a bluebottle fly you want to swat with rolled up newspaper, like she is now.

"Seriously, I'll be fine, Vega." I wish I hadn't put out my cigarette.

She looks at me again, searches my face. I blink slowly. "I'll go get Andre."

Before I can stop her she's pushed open the front door and is wriggling her way inside. I really don't have the energy or the effort to follow her so I stay where I'm sitting, staring into the distance. If I close my eyes I can still feel Beck's hand on my hip, like a ghost, and his breath on my neck, and it's beginning to repulse me as well as excite me. I don't know how that can happen. I need to get away from this place and from him, shake out my mind a little more. I'm just beginning to shiver and wish to holy hell I'd bought some kind of jacket with me, when the door bangs open again and Tori and Andre emerge, the latter being dragged behind a very cross looking Tori, and looking pretty sheepish.

"What happened?" I ask slowly. Tori lets go of Andre where she had a fist scrunched in his shirt to drag him out of the room and glowers at him. Andre looks a little scared, but in my inebriated state, I'm finding this all very amusing.

"When I found him he was trying to get some dumb girl to notice him, and make her jealous or something, so he grabbed me and kissed me! Without warning! Just to get this girl!" I look at Andre but he doesn't meet my eye and he shifts his feet suspiciously. I snort.

"Smooth, Harris."

"Shu'up" he mutters. I laugh loudly and both of them glare at me.

"it's not funny!" Tori screeches. "He practically assaulted me, just to use me!"

"The girl was pretty cute…"

"I don't care!"

"Look you two obviously have some unresolved issues." I smirk. "I'm assuming you bought Andre to drive me home? So can we, like, do that?"

'Yeah, Andre, drive us home." She shoves him in the back with more force that I thought she had and he staggers a bit before regaining his balance and sighing. He fishes his keys out his pocket and unlocks his car which is parked a couple of metres down the road. I stumble for it gratefully and take shot gun even when Tori tries to protest. Andre puts on some Bob Marley, the Exodus album, and I have vague memories of my Dad listening to it in the kitchen with Mom, cooking pasta and smiling together, before he got caught and all hell set lose on the West household. It reminds me of peaceful times, when I'd just started Hollywood arts and the boy with coffee skin wasn't even a blip on my radar. I find myself tapping along to the infectious beat. Andre smiles at me.

He drops me off home at precisely 1:15 am and Tori's tan face peers out of the back window apparently to make sure I make it up the front path alive. I stagger upstairs in the empty house, this time shrugging on some old sweats and a white wife-beater before I collapse in bed. I can feel this becoming routine. I wonder if Cat's still at the party, and think about how I was meant to help her clear up tomorrow. Oh well, she'll find someone else to help her or something. Maybe the guy she was all over. I wonder vaguely if Robbie is asleep now or thinking of Cat as well. I find myself hoping he's okay.

* * *

AN: So, you probably won't like Cat in this fic for a while. Sorry about that. I personally have nothing against her, it just works. So yeah, a little Jori conversation here because apparently I can't keep my other ships out. Apologies.

...The plot thickens. Comments, anyone?


	4. Chapter 4

_'Well there's a million other girls who do it just like you, looking as innocent as possible to get to who they want and what they like. It's easy if you do it right. Well I refuse, I refuse, I refuse.'- Misery Business, Paramore_

* * *

When I pull up to Cat's the next morning the evidence of the party is still strewn across the front drive, empty red cups blowing like leaves across the lawn and cigarette butts that could almost be still smouldering dotting all the way to the front door. I can even pick out the one I left. The whole place looks like a bomb went off, and I'm pretty sure the content of someone's stomach is deposited in the bush to the side of the gate from the stench it's giving off. I wrinkle my nose and hammer on the front door and try to keep as far away from it as possible.

Cat opens the door after I've nearly knocked it down from banging on it so much and she looks mildly put out by the noise I've made when she opens it an inch and peers out around the crack of space she's made. Her eyes have traces of the bright pink eye shadow she was wearing last night around them, coupled with dark violet bags under her eyes. She's dressed in a violent orange onesie. I wince. Orange is second only to yellow on the long list of colours I hate. Which is why I usually stick to black.

"'Lo? Jade?"

"Cat, let me in. I've been waiting on your doorstep for like a small millennium now!"

"Oh my god, I thought you were gonna be a parent or something. I was so worried! I almost didn't open the door!"

"Why? Have you had any harassing you or something?"

"I got a phone call! The man was pretty scary. He kept on telling me he was outraged!" She whimpers a little and opens the door the rest of the way so I can step inside. Before she closes it she sticks her head out quickly and checks the street, apparently checking for any middle aged infuriated parents, and then hurriedly withdraws her head and slams the door. She turns to me and bites her thumbnail worriedly.

"So what did you say?"

"I just hung up on him! I didn't know what else to do!"

"Good." I stride past her, stepping pointedly over the cups covering the hallway floor and trying to ignore the curious stain on the carpet just before the kitchen. I clear a space for myself on the breakfast bar and hitch myself up so I'm sitting on the counter top. Cat has, at least, cleaned this part of the house of peculiar liquids. I lean over and set her coffee machine going and watch it start burbling away. Cat runs down the hall after me.

"But what if he calls back?" she wails.

"Then don't answer the phone! It's not your fault his child got stupidly trashed and didn't have a brain cell to perhaps not get caught wasted by his over-bearing parents!"

"How did he get my number?"

"The kid snitched, Cat."

"Why would they be so mean to me?" she cries. I roll my eyes and slip off the counter to grab a mug and stick it under the machine to catch the hot caffeine flowing through.

"Because, people suck, Cat."

She nods sadly at me and pushes some sugar towards me before I can ask for it, and I dump a load in my coffee before stirring and taking a long deep sip. I didn't sleep very well last night and this is probably the only thing that's going to keep me upright for the rest of the day. It burns my tongue on the way down, scorching my throat but it tastes good and my whole body just kind of relaxes as I swallow. Maybe I should be worried about how reliant on coffee I am, but it's better than some of the over addictions I've had. Alcohol and cigarettes used to be the only things I could depend on, but then they too let me down, the rush that I used to get fading away to a familiar sort of comfort whenever the liquid burned my throat or the smoke filled my mouth. In comparison, coffee was pretty mild.

"Seriously Cat, this place looks disgusting. Haven't you tidied up yet? I thought you were gonna do it before you went to bed?"

"I got distracted…." I snort. Right, so she was too busy with mr nameless to bother.

"Sure you did."

"I couldn't help it! He was…cute."

"Right." I really can't be bothered to listen to Cat trill about the latest guy she's mooning over, the 'fun' she had with him last night or other stupid thing she let herself in for. I'm also studiously avoiding any topic that could in anyway, however slight, be related to Beck, but my brain's kind of an ass and he seems to appear in my mind whenever the Hell he wants. I slam my cup down, smirking as Cat jumps at the noise, her eyes widening slightly.

"Well, you get the downstairs and I'll get the upstairs, then."

Cat beams at me, surprised that I'm actually following through with the offer of help I made earlier, and runs for the kitchen cupboard with the cleaning materials in it. "Thanks Jadey!" She shoves some disinfectant in my hand and some rubbish bags while I glare at her. I take them from her mutely though because if we're on different floors I won't have to talk to her and she's definitely got the worst end of the bargain here. "My parents would kill me if they found the house like this, so you're the best!"

"Yeah, yeah." I mutter, sweeping some empty cans and cups from the kitchen table into my bag with one push of my arm, and then I propel Cat out of the room and in the direction of the (terrible I'm sure) living room. "Go." I command dully and she scurries off as I stomp upstairs. Like I suspected the party didn't really reach up here. There's some cans to clear away and the evidence of a used joint that I really wish I was a part of in the spare bedroom, but not much else. The bathroom is surprisingly clean, though I wipe up some spilled beer and flush the toilet a couple of times. That's it though, and I bin up my cleaning stuff and tie up the bags, lobbing them down the stairs. They land with a flump in the hallway.

I know Cat's got quite a job ahead of her so I go into her room instead and resist the urge just to collapse in her bed and sleep until Cat wonders where I've gone and wakes me up thinking I've died or something. Instead, I sit at her desk and stare at the work she's got piled up there. It's a load of shit that I know I've got the same to do at home, most due for monday, and that I haven't even considered yet. Fuck that, I don't have room in my head for homework at the moment. It looks like I'll be making up some bullshit excuses to most of my teachers tomorrow. Cat's laptop is open and there's a word document up, her latest script about some kid that can fly and I roll my eyes internally. I'm disturbed by Cat's phone buzzing on the table loudly and I pick it up. She's not exactly around to stop me. The text is from an unknown number.

_Yeah, you were a lot of fun last night. You looked super cute in that dress, but I think I would have preferred you without it' _Then there's a winky face and it's signed off Kyle.

I'm almost a little bit sick in my mouth.

I scroll up to find they texted this morning, last night as well, and before, and this isn't just some guy that Cat hooked up with at a party, this is a full blown _thing_. There's hundreds of messages here, and I scroll up them slowly, my eyes widening. Cat's replies are full of love hearts and smiley faces and kisses whereas his are short and to the point. The more and more I read of this Kyle guy the more and more I _hate_ him and the girl downstairs is beginning to look less and less innocent. His texts make me physically ill, the way he seems to be leering at her, so crude, and I can't believe she's lapping it all up. She doesn't _mind._

It's not like I've always thought her innocent, I haven't trust me, but this is different. This isn't some guy just trying to make a pass and Cat being too oblivious to see otherwise, this is real. This is a vile guy taking everything he can get and Cat just letting it happen. Maybe even wanting it to happen. I try not to think of the time Cat had drunklenly slurred that she wished she was like me in the 'guy area' as she had put it. I try even harder not to think about how I had said 'Just man up and do it Cat. It's just sex.' Like it wasn't a big deal. And back then, it wasn't. Beck and I did it all the time, and it didn't _mean _anything. It should've done.

I exit their messages with a hurried swipe. I don't want to read anymore. It's making my stomach churn. The main message screen opens in front of me and this time I find three unread texts from Robbie.

_Cat, I'm really sorry for what I did last night. I shouldn't have pressured you like that, you didn't have to say you liked me back, I didn't expect it, and I didn't expect it the other times in the past either. I just wanted you to know, wanted to remind you. I shouldn't have done. Please forgive me? :( x_

_Cat? Are you okay? Do you want some help clearing up or something? You looked really pretty last night. I know I told you before though. I'm sorry x_

_How about just hanging out? x_

She hasn't answered any of them.

So she knew. She did know that he liked her, that he poured most of his affections onto her like rain. And yet she skipped around with that smile on her face like there's not a thought in her head, nor a cloud in the sky.

I can feel it in my gut, that little spark of anger. Beck used to say it was the spark that set off the fire. My grip tightens on the phone as I stare down at it. I think of what Tori said last night, the memory of her words settling uncomfortably in my mind. It isn't fair. None of this is fair. But Cat, sure she could stand there and smile and blink her pretty big eyes, but she's good at hurting people. Apparently throwing knives that launch themselves in other people's backs until she pulls it back out, whispering sweetly against the pain she's caused. And she's doing it to Robbie. It's harsh and it's cruel and if there was anything that Robbie was, it was _nice_. Just nice. And he deserved better.

I can feel my heart rate racketing up as I think about what Cat is doing, to herself and Robbie. Because at the same time as hurting other people, she's ignoring the fact that she's self-destructing. It's not healthy. People should not be doormats. People should not be walked all over. Kyle is walking all over her.

I slam the phone down on the desk so hard it vibrates feebly at me.

Cat is in the hallway when I thunder down the stairs, scrubbing at the stain on the carpet but really only making it worse. It bleeds further into the carpet, yellow and pungent and Cat gives an exasperated sigh and leans back on her heels, looking at me.

It's dangerous, I can feel the burn in my stomach light up just watching her and the way her wide brown eyes bat innocently at me when they're anything but. When she realises I'm glaring she blinks like a confused baby deer or something and I find myself grinding my teeth just to stop myself from trying to slap the stupid expression from her face.

"Whatty?"

I roll my eyes violently. "People can be really shitty sometimes Cat. Like, really really crap. I didn't think you were one of them."

She scrambles to her feet and drops the cloth she was gripping. It flutters to the floor. She's confused. I want to grab her shoulders and shake them. Hard. I don't let her speak.

My tone is cutting and she cringes away from me a little bit. Good. I don't want her near me."So how's Kyle this morning then, huh?" She lets out a small gasp. "Yeah, your dirty secret boyfriend- that none of us knew about. Does being your friend not count anymore? Were you planning to tell anyone soon or-?"

"Jade, I- he..I mean I didn't mean-" Her pink bottom lip quivers as she scrambles for words. My own are laced with daggers dipped in poison.

"You got yourself something good there, Cat." Her forehead creases at my dripping sarcasm, and she frowns at me like a wounded child. There's the beginning of tears sliding down her cheek. She's still stuttering as I take a step forward. "And, Robbie texted. But you knew that right? He deserves so much more than a _bitch_ like you."

She breathes in sharply. "Jade, I-"

"Save it, Cat."

She starts crying properly then, crystal tears slipping down her pretty cheeks, making the remnants of mascara she's still got on run. She tries to grab my arm as I walk past, but I shake her off and she begins to wail for real.

"Jaaade, I'm sorry for not telling you, you're my best friend I-" I swing around before I yank the door open.

"You don't get it, do you? Find it in that air-head brain of yours Cat. It's what you're doing to Robbie. You don't even have the decency to give hims chance or let him down gently. You treat people like shit Cat. Wake up and smell the perfume."

She stalls again and her cries are reduced to pathetic sobs and sniffles, with make up all over her face. She looks like I've just slapped her. I wish I had. She reaches out to stop me again with shaking fingers, but I ignore her and march out the house. The drive is still dirty. Cat can clean that up herself.

I jump in my car, slam the stereo on and drive away, my breaths just about returning to normal.

/

I bang the car door as hard as I can when I pull up, on the off chance that my mother is home and might hear me, and to vent some of my still boiling over anger. How could she? Of course my mother is not in to hear it. My phone is buzzing in my hand, all messages from Cat saying over and over again how sorry she is, xs that go on for miles tagged on to each one. I delete every last one of them.

Until I get one from Beck.

_Look, I'm sorry about last night, Jade. I was drunk and high and whatever else. It shouldn't have happened, I get it. But what did you do to Cat? She's crying. We messed up, I know, but you can't mess up your relationship with her as well._

I'm not sure, but I think I throw my phone at the wall, because all I can feel is white hot anger burning up inside me and I don't know what I'm doing anymore. It hits the plaster with a crack and falls to the carpeted floor but the case does its job and it's not harmed. I wish it were so I couldn't read Beck's message.

I just want my old relationship with Beck back, where everything was okay and we laughed and chatted and held each other close in the dark. And then we stopped talking and gradually everything went to shit. I can't believe he's blaming me for this when he hasn't even heard my side of the story, but he's stopped listening, he never listened, and I just want to scream.

He's sorry. Sorry? Does that make it okay? I guess in his world it does. But he's fucked with my emotions too much. I want to rip a chunk out of him, wipe that disapproving look I know he must have on, off his face- the one he used to give me all the time when he felt I stepped out of line. He doesn't have clue what's going on. I'm sick to death of the thought of him.

_I've _messed up? Me?

How fucking dare he.

* * *

AN: Massive thanks to the lovely Justsmile1 for help on this chapter.

I am so sorry about what I'm doing to Cat (And Beck). They will redeem themselves, I promise. (I hope)

Thoughts and reviews? They keep me warm at night...


	5. Chapter 5

'_Have faith in me, because there are things I've seen that I don't want to believe. So cling to what you know and never let go. You should know things aren't always what they seem.'- Have Faith In Me, A Day To Remember_

* * *

My phone lies on the counter, ignored.

The house phone rings and it goes unanswered.

I sit in my room, my iPod docked and blaring out one of my favourite bands, Creed, the lead singer's rasping voice and the chorus of thrashing guitars surrounding and drowning me. My curtains shut out the sunshine outside, casting long purple shadows on my carpet floor and leaving me in the half darkness. Once again, I've blocked myself off.

I don't like the fact that I've made Cat cry. Contrary to popular belief I do have a heart and it squeezes at the thought of making my best friend spill tears over me, but she's done things I didn't expect, and she's treated people worse than even I could get away with, and it's not fair that just because she's sweet and pretty that everyone should take her side, whilst leaving me to fume even further. Add to this Beck's treatment of me and I'm ready to punch a hole straight through the plaster in my bedroom wall whilst imagining it's his face.

I pick up my scissors instead and set to work shredding old scripts of character's I used to be and scrap paper into thin white strips that drift like snow onto my bedroom floor. It's therapeutic somehow and I can feel my rage ebbing away slightly away the more I do it, the urge to snatch up my phone from my bedside table and dial his number to scream down the line, or jump in my car to hammer on his RV door, diminishing the more the minutes slip by and the sound of my scissors and the crashing instruments fills my ears. It's not easy, pushing it to the back of mind like that, but I am not going to go out of my way just to express my anger. Not today. I haven't got the energy. And the more I see his face, whether it's in person, or floating behind the back of my eyelids when I finally drop my scissors and lie back against the pillows, the harder this becomes. Was what I said to Cat out of line? I didn't think so, and I still don't. Cat has a way of convincing you that there's no more than air floating around in that pretty little head of hers, but you're not best friends with her since eighth grade without realising she's got a bit more going for her. Cat's talented sure, she can sing and dance up a storm and keep every eye in a room trained on her as she prances across a stage, but she's got a way of wrapping people around her little finger with just a twirl of her scarlet hair and a blink of her eyelashes. And I'm one of them. People often wonder why big bad scary Jade West is best friends with Cat Valentine, the ditziest girl in school, but Cat's almost as hard to say no to as I am, and I suppose that's why I've stuck around so long. Cat's cute and sweet, and I used to think she meant no-one any harm. She captivates people with the way she emits this sunshine glow and her permanent dazzling smile, and I used to think she was immune to the way people fell at her feet to be her friend, but now I know that's not the case. Beck, Andre, Tori, Robbie and I- we're all under her spell. Because I can't just stop being friends with her. I look again at her texts with their incessant hearts and it's like tossing a puppy into the road in a cardboard box and leaving it there while it's still whining. Even I can't do it.

But I'm not ready to apologise yet. She needs to sit and think for a while.

I'm also pretty confused as to why I jumped so high and hard at Cat. What she did makes my blood boil so hard it feels like it's going to spill out my ears or something, but it's made worse by _who _she did it to. I imagine Robbie in his stupid blue button down shirt stuttering as he talked to her, trying _so hard _just to get and hold her attention, while she had half an eye on someone else and less than an ear on what was tumbling out of his mouth while his cheeks lit up like a streetlight stuck at red. Robbie needs to toughen up some, but for now it's up the people he trusts not to walk all over his heart until it's squashed and bleeding on the floor. Trust is something you need to reserve for the people you have utter faith in, people who you know aren't going to turn around with a smile on their face and a knife in their hand. Robbie gives his away too freely, some people say I don't give mine away enough. But I'm careful with who I trust, sound them out first, tap them with my words like I'm trying to work out just how thick their walls go, if they'll be able to keep and hold and protect the faith I'm given them.

I guess you could say I've only done that with two people, and only one willingly. Cat gained my trust without me really realising it, when I was thirteen and she was twelve and and someone glared at me the wrong way in the corridor and I maybe not so accidentally pushed them into a garbage can by my locker. It was my word against theirs and I was looking at a week's worth of detention, which at thirteen sounded like an awful amount of trouble and I really didn't want to add this to the list of reasons why my mother should hate me, when Cat stepped in and told them the other girl had tripped, that she had seen it all. And that was it, I got away free, and Cat had somehow wormed her way in to be not only my friend but also now held my trust like a quivering thing in her palm. She still holds it, but after this morning the wings are looking broken around their edges and it's struggling a little in her hand.

The only other person I handed my trust over to was Beck and that took godamn months of dates and whispered promises and compliments in the morning as he picked me up for school in his truck and car journeys where our hands would sit resting on the centre console, our fingers loosely joined. It took me weeks and months to open up to him and wrench open a hole in my walls just over my heart for him to settle there. But settle he did, and soon the moss began to grow over again and he was stuck there and I began to get used to carrying the thought of him so close to my heart. Until after two years of dating things started to get stale, the moss began to wither, the walls previously keeping him in started to crumble and started to let him slip out. Beck was safety, Beck held all of me, my rust, my heart, my everything, but somewhere along the way I'd stopped loving him, and he'd become just the boy I was with. My best friend yes, someone who could turn me on yes, but someone I could imagine spending the rest of my life with? Whenever I thought about it the sensation of suffocating overwhelmed me. And that's when I knew I had to get out. And that dear Beck is why we broke up.

Which is why his text hurts so much, makes me feel so bitter and shut out the light like it may burn me. He still holds my trust. Stuff like that is hard to reclaim and it's not as if he broke it breaking up with _me_. I understand that I was the one doing all the breaking, maybe his heart in the process, and for that I'm truly sorry. But I could't stay in something that wasn't real anymore. It's one thing to live in a world of imagination, it's another to start planning your life around it. One of us needed to understand that this was it for us, and it might as well have been me. I'm sure, given the time, he would have come to the same conclusion. But Beck was my whole world practically for two years and I was expecting us to still be friends.

I take a deep breath and realise for the first time that nothing in my room smells like Beck anymore. It's a startling realisation and I have to press the heel of my palm into my sockets for a second to stop my emotions getting the better of me. Not my sheets where he would lay me down beneath him, a smirk on his face before he kissed me, not the chair where I make my slap videos and have sat on his lap countless times, not my pillows, not my clothes, not anything. His aftershave, the smell oh his coffee, his cigarettes, there's not a trace of him in the air. Perhaps that's the first time in two years. I'm just not used to it, being around someone that much, whether you truly love them or not, it's going to feel strange when they're suddenly not there.

_What did you do to Cat?_

I was hoping that maybe, after all we've had, he at least owes me a little trust in return, should have listened to what I had to say before he jumped in making conclusions. Maybe he's more angry than he's letting on. Maybe I hurt him more than I originally thought. Maybe he was hanging on harder than I was, his finger still grazing the cliff face we were falling off of.

Still, he has no right to judge me like that. When he does't know the whole story, what our friend Cat has become.

And I'd tell him, I'd text back or ring him and tell him exactly why he's wrong and ask who the fuck he thinks he is. But maybe it's not my story to tell.

I think of Robbie, probably moping at home, glancing at his phone every now and again just to check if by some miracle she's replied, and then collapsing back onto his Star Was covered bed when he finds she hasn't. Completely unaware of the practical shit storm he's created by being his usual stumbling hopeless self. Beck can either hear the story from him or not at all, because I'm not lowering myself to responding to his antagonising. This isn't some fight we're having again. Because I put a stop to that, didn't I?

Even though it's only four in the afternoon, I crawl under my covers and bury my head in my pillows, hoping that at least for a couple of hours this headache will go away.

In my dreams I'm fighting a knight with long brown hair escaping from underneath his silver helmet. He's brandishing a sword that glints at me and throws diamonds into my eyes and I have to duck and dodge around him as he plunges it in my direction and twists it in the air. We're dancing on a drawbridge and bit by bit it's closing leaving me to slip down the steepening slope. It's only when he catches me with a strike to my shoulder that I look down at my body and see the glistening green scales covering my skin. The knight is gone and the drawbridge is closed. I'm left alone in the darkness of my castle yet again.

/

I'm jolted awake by the sound of car wheels on gravel, the stones popping out form underneath the tyres and I twitch my curtain back to see a truck I don't recognise pull into the drive. The person inside is obscured by the dark tint on the windows but they seem to sit inside for a couple of minutes, just staring at the house. They don't get out. Eventually I turn way from the widow. If they want to talk to me they'll get out of the car. I'm not bothered either way. In fact I'd probably prefer it if they just gave up and drove away now. Sure enough however, a minute later the sound of the doorbell resonates up the hall and I groan and shove a pillow over my head before realising I can't really ignore the mystery person now standing on my front step. I shove my feet into some slippers and trip down the stairs, yanking the door open with a scowl on my face.

Until I see Robbie standing on my porch, his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his eyes angled firmly towards his feet. My eyebrows shoot upwards.

"Shapiro?"

His eyes dart up to meet mine briefly before he skitters them away again, glancing around at my porch, resting on the stupid swing set we've got on the front lawn that hasn't been touched since I was eight years old, when I fell off it and cut my knee and proceeded to scream blue murder for the next couple of hours until my family finally decided it was bleeding too much to ignore it any longer. I ended up with four stitches in my knee cap. I've still got the scars, and it's part of the reason why I always wear such thick black tights all the time. They're not exactly pretty to look at. I see him look at it questioningly for a second, like he can't believe that such a childish thing is sitting in my front drive, but then the expression fades and his face melts back to be unreadable.

"Are you, like, alright?" I ask slowly and he turns to face me at last and nods a few times. He pushes his hands deeper in his pockets. I'm getting frustrated with his silence and I clack my teeth together, drumming my fingers on the side of the door. "Do you want to come in or something?" He grunts and I take it as affirmative, striding away from him and into the only room downstairs in my house I take any pleasure in being in. It's a small room. My mother used to call it a 'snug' and she filled it with small armchairs and a tiny bookshelf and hung up little ornaments on the walls. Since she so infrequently home I've claimed it as my own. The living room is too big for one person. It's cold and grey and the room seems to gape at me, reminding me of my own loneliness. With Beck it was fine. We used to sit on the sofa with our legs on top of each other and watch horror movies on the enormous wide screen TV, but without him the screen always seemed stupidly big, the room ridiculously large and I felt like I was about to be swallowed by space. So instead I started to take over the snug. I moved the armchairs around, filled the corners with beanbags. Removed the bookshelf. Moved the smaller TV from my room there and set up my gaming systems. I installed my sound system too, made sure the speakers were pushed in the corners of the room. My PearMac is set up by the window with my recording equipment and keyboard attached. I've basically made my own games room, sitting room and studio all in one. I don't think my mother has even noticed yet.

I throw open the door and collapse on one of the beanbags, my eyebrows piqued. "Yes?" I drawl and he shuffles anxiously under my gaze, his eyes darting around the room nervously. He bends at the knees slightly, as if about to sit down when he remembers where he is and straightens up again. I snicker inwards in at his awkwardness. He's always amused me, in a weird, laughing-at-you-not-with-you kind of way, but instead I continue to watch him blankly. He coughs nervously and I roll my eyes at the sound and the silence that swallows it.

"Oh dear God, spit it out Shapiro," I bark and he flinches again, nodding at my words.

"Yeah, I just um, I came here- obviously, because, like. Why did you know, do what you did?" He stammers out, fiddling with his fingers, twisting and un-twisting them. It's weird to see him without Rex, his hands are normally so pre-occupied with the toy puppet that when he's without it, it's obvious he doesn't quite know what to do with himself.

"I do a lot of things, Shapiro. To which are you referring?" I ask and he takes a deep gulp of breath. I know what he's referring to. Cat. Of course, it's Cat. Not a lot seems to happen with Robbie that isn't somehow entwined with the ditzy redhead. I buy myself some time to answer his question as it takes him about twenty years to reply to my question.

"Beck, he told me. About Cat and that other guy and you and the shouting. At Cat, I mean. Not just you know, random shouting, unless, I don't know, do you randomly shout?" He laughs nervously, twisting his fingers tightly into his shirt and a small smile stretches across my lips. His rambling pauses for a moment as he looks back at me, and I quickly wipe the expression off my face, leaning forward on my knees.

"She deserved everything she got, Robbie," I say quietly. He stands there awkwardly, shaking his head, until slowly, his shake turns into a nod, and he's agreeing with what I'm saying.

'I know,' He replies softly, and I gesture to the beanbag he so desperately wants to sink into, nodding. He tentatively lowers himself into it, his posture stiff for a minute until he relaxes as I talk.

"If you know, then why the Hell was I the one having to tell her she was being a total bitch? Huh Shapiro?" I question and he leans away backwards from me, an expression that looks a lot like fear written across his face. I think of how Tori deals with Cat, when she knows she's gonna get 'scared' by whatever she has to say. I have to treat Robbie the way Tori treats Cat in those moments. I will not ever tame myself, not for anybody. But Robbie's different, he's just, Robbie. So I tone down my angry expression and lean back in my chair a little bit. "Seriously Robbie, she treats you like absolute shit," I still practically spit it out.

He sits there stammering for a couple more seconds, his expression flickering from something that looks like defiance to defeat almost instantaneously. "She doesn't mean it. She just, you know, needs to be told to stop," he says softly.

I slam my fist into the beanbag I'm sitting and although the hand is swallowed up my the soft material and creates little more than muffled 'thwump' Robbie still flinches at my jerky movement and his fingers creep back to twist in the fabric of his own beanbag. I shake my head at him. "Robbie, she knows exactly what she's doing. She's not that naive for God's sake. She's screwing with your heart just like she's screwing that other guy."

He blanches at this, his skin washing faintly green like even the thought of it makes him sick inside. It probably does, I realise. HIs mouth twists into a grimace and he sags even lower into where he's sitting, looking like he wishes the floor would just swallow him whole. I know that feeling. It's the feeling I used to get when I'd stop fighting with Beck to realise I've been wrong the whole time. You feel stupid and insignificant. I have to remind myself to tone it down again, for his sake.

"It was just a kiss," he whispers, but even I can tell he doesn't believe that anymore. I let the breath whistle out from between my teeth before speaking.

"Robbie, she's been seeing this guy for four months behind yours. and everybody else's included, back's. So that's why I laid into her, not for a stupid kiss, but because she's been a sneaky slut."

He cringes at my harsh use of language, but the shaking of his head has stopped and his fingers have stilled in the beanbag."H-how do you know?"

"I read her texts," I reply flatly.

"Oh."

"Yeah." I lean back into my seat again, pick up an acoustic guitar sitting by the window and pluck on the strings absently. They're horribly out of tune; I haven't played it a while.

Robbie frowns at me. his bottom lip caught in-between his teeth as he looks over in my direction. "Maybe she just didn't want to hurt me?" There's a hopeful lilt to his voice that I roll my eyes at.

"Does it matter? Does this feel any better? You knowing? She's still done the same thing, but instead of being honest with you Robbie, and letting you move on, she's continued to dodge your questions and left you in fucking limbo. I'm not even sure she was ever going to tell you. Now tell me she didn't want to hurt you, Shapiro."

He just swallows and looks down at his hands, and I lift a string of the guitar and let it ping back, the warped note twanging in the silence that settles between us. Slowly, he shakes his head.

"Beck doesn't know about the other guy." He looks up at me through his eyelashes, his forehead creasing with worry lines.

"Yeah well, Beck doesn't know much about anything these days. And he's even more unwilling to actually listen."

"He thinks you just laid into her, I think. He doesn't understand."

"Neither did you," I say, continuing to stare down at the neck of the guitar, fiddling with the tuning of the strings without really paying attention to what I'm doing. Robbie watches my hands carefully while he looks like he's trying to think of what to say, tasting the words on his tongue before he speaks them.

"I didn't, but I think I do now. You're-you're not meant to be a nice person, Jade, but you stood up for me and that was pretty nice."

"Because Cat's a bitch," I reply blankly. Robbie says nothing more, just continues to chew on the inside of his mouth. It strikes me that Robbie doesn't have many friends, apart from maybe Tori and Andre. Cat hardly counts and Beck never really understood Robbie's awkwardness, and God knows I never made an effort. These days we don't hang out as a group that often and Tori and Andre quite happily spend their time writing teeny bop songs and smiling at each other and that kinda leaves Robbie….out of the loop. Like me. Although I took myself out voluntarily.

I pluck at the lowest guitar string and it resonates in the room horribly and Robbie shudders at the sound.

"That guitar is out of tune," he states.

'Yes, thank you _Catherine Obvious_," I drawl and I receive a flicker of a smile in return, a twitch of the lips. He holds his hands out for the guitar and I hand it over with a roll of my eyes. "Go on then Mr Music Man, work your magic."

"I just like guitars." His lanky fingers are already setting about the tuning pegs and twisting them in different directions and checking the strings every so often. He gets it tuned by ear perfectly, something I've never been able to do, and I grant him some begrudging respect for that. Once he's done he strokes it lovingly a second and then hands it back to me carefully, cradling the body and not letting go of the neck until it's back in my lap. I strum a C chord and it vibrates at just the right pitch. I look up at Robbie and he just shrugs me a lopsided smile.

"I didn't know you played," he says. We seem to have left the subject of Cat and my outburst behind, which is fine by me. Robbie looks more comfortable now that we're talking about something he understands something he gets. Cat Valentine certainly isn't on that list. I'm pretty sure I don't make it either, but that's the way I like it. I don't make many people's lists that way.

I smile crookedly at him. "There's a lot of things you don't know about me Shapiro."

He leaves pretty quickly after that, muttering about picking his sister up from a friends. Just before he shuffles out the door his phone buzzes in his hand and I get enough of a look before he hurriedly shoves it back into his pocket to see that it's from Cat. He deletes the message.

I let him see himself out, but after he's gone I sit in the beanbag he's just vacated creating pretty chord sequences and strumming patterns and hoping that it's evidence that Robbie is starting to grow a backbone, maybe with a little influence from me.

* * *

AN: I was without internet for a couple of days, hence why this is a little later than it has been before. I was getting serious wifi withdrawal symptoms believe me. Excuse any typos, I'll go back and fix them later but I'm ill and jkndkwj.

Is that...friendship forming Jade? Enjoy and please leave your thoughts.


	6. Chapter 6

_'And there's nothing wrong with me, this is how I'm supposed to be. In a land of make believe, that don't believe in me'- Jesus Of Suburbia, Greenday._

* * *

Monday morning rolls around, as Mondays are wont to do, and finds me lying with my head shoved as deep under the covers as I can possibly get. The inclination to resurface and drag my tired body to the shower isn't there, but my alarm clock s screams at me, drilling its repetitive pattern into my brain. I shoot out a hand to snap it off and then lay still a second, gathering the effort, no _courage_, to start this day. I don't want to do this. I don't want to have to face Beck. I don't want to have to face anyone. Yet again. I guess this is going to be part of my routine for a while now.

It's going to be weird; walking down the corridor without my hand in his, even if lately our hold has been weak and limp. It'll be weird not waiting by his locker, or after class, not sitting next to him at lunch, not having his arms slung round my shoulders in class. Things we did out of routine, things we did for show- things that we aren't going to do anymore.

I drag myself out of bed reluctantly, realising that by hitting the snooze button repeatedly I've made myself late. I take possibly the world's quickest shower and towel myself off in seconds. I throw on some clothes I find on the top layer folded in my drawer- a burgundy RAMONES shirt and black cardigan. I grab my skater skirt and boots and wriggle into them before barrelling down the stairs. I don't have time for anything to eat, let alone a cup of properly brewed coffee, so I leave in a foul mood, my hair mussed and unbrushed.

I also have to drive myself to school. But I didn't think Beck would turn up to drive me anyway.

Did I?

/

I stomp through the school's front entrance just as our infernal school bell is signalling the beginning of first lesson. I've missed homeroom but I'm kind of glad. He would have been sitting there- just waiting for me to walk in. And I definitely can't deal with that before nine in the morning. Not the expression on his face, or the expression of shock or lack thereof on everybody else's when they find out we were no longer a 'thing'. I also don't want to be around to watch the girls start to fling themselves at him. I wonder if he'll take any of them up on their aggressive flirty offers today. Usually he smiles politely at them, or I drag him away before he gets a word in edgeways, but today I've blown that door wide open. I wonder amusedly if there'll be a queue of simpering girls following him around by the time the day is out. Half amusedly. But it's not my business anymore.

I sling my stuff in my locker, glaring at any students who get within an inch of knocking me with their bags as they hurry to class. The corridor is a blur of colour and noise and I grit my teeth as I fish around for my advanced lit texts to shove in my bag before pausing when I realise there's someone leaning against the locker next to mine. I yank my head from out of the darkness, ready to tell them _kindly _to bother someone else and fuck if Beck had told people already and they were here to leer at me I was going to _kill_ him-

-when I realise the person attached to the body leaning next to mine is Robbie. I slam my locker shut and shoulder my bag, turning to face him.

"Don't you, like, have class Shapiro?"

"So do you." He replies, keeping his hands in the pockets of his impossibly skinny jeans. He shrugs. "Are you going to Sikowitz's class?"

I frown at him. "Shapiro, I'm not letting Beck scare me off my education for God's sake. I just- you know, won't sit with him."

"Right." He bites his lip. "I was just, kinda, checking if you were okay." I snort at him.

"Me? Okay? Shapiro, I think I can handle my ex-boyfriend. I'll be fine. Were you checking up on me?" I ask incredulously, and he pushes away from my locker, hiding under his stupid curly bangs.

"No." he answers. "I was just seeing how you were, cause I know you broke up and I didn't know where anyone else was, and-"

I cut in. I'd seen the group this morning, and I'd purposely cut across the hall to avoid them, ignoring Vega's stupid laugh and the way Beck was standing oh so comfortably next to her. I hadn't realised Robbie wasn't among them, I wasn't looking for him.

"Everyone else was by Tori's locker, like they are every morning Shapiro. So instead of questioning me Christ sake's, what's your deal?"

This time I see when his cheeks flame red and he shakes his head slowly. Of course- he was avoiding Cat. I guess Robbie and I have more in common today that most people. It's stupid how uncomfortable other people can make you feel, how you can be pushed or push yourself out of a group just because of one other insignificant person. When I was eight I remember refusing to come in for tea one night, lying on the lawn and looking at the stars, not blinking, because I felt like one second with my eyes closed and the sky would fall down on top of me. And it was so pretty and I wanted to lie looking at the lights above me forever. My father had laughed, come outside to get me.

_ "You know Jade; every single person is made from Star Dust. So it doesn't matter if you're not looking at the stars, you've got brightness inside here." He pointed to his heart and smiled at me, then pulled me up from the grass with one strong hand._

_"Really?" Eight-year-old-me had replied. "How come?" I tugged on his index finger impatiently._

_"Because, that's what you're made of. Skin and our bones and everything. It's all Star Dust." _

_"But I thought I was made from blood and atoms and stuff?" I had asked, frowning deeply at him as he laughed._

_"Well, yes that too, but that's the kind of stuff made from Star Dust. You were created in the sky, Jade." He winked at me._

_ "Are super nice people made of extra star dust then?" Because that's the way my mind used to work. Emphasis on the -used- bit._

_ "Not necessarily, no. We're all the same. Exactly the same, underneath it all."_

_ "So absolutely everyone is made from Star Dust. It's normal?"_

_ "Yes, Jade."_

_ "Oh." I had hoped it was special, that I was special. I should have learnt that I never was._

_ "Dad, how many people live in the world?" I asked, looking at him and then shifting my gaze to the sky._

_ "About six billion. Now come on in and eat your tea, Jade."_

_ That was a lot of people, and a lot of star dust. And now I was looking at it, that was a lot of sky, stretching out across my vision, skating across the rooftops of the houses on my street, grazing the tops of the trees on the beach a couple of miles away I could just see silhouetted against the streetlight. And it kept going. _

_ Suddenly I felt very small. _

I had learnt then that as a person I was pretty insignificant. But as I got older, I realised that everybody else was too. Specks across a film of time and space. Grains of sand on a beach. Droplets of rain in the vastest ocean. So I hated being affected by another person, because they were just as unimportant as I was. There aren't worth my time, or my worry, or my anything. I decided pretty early on I wouldn't let anyone hurt me or boss me around, because they weren't worth that. They shouldn't hold that status. And it worked.

Until Beck came along, there were no exceptions. And now it's back that way.

And I guess Robbie's probably feeling the same. Someone just as unimportant as him is making him feel like shit and he doesn't understand why or how to control it.

And we're both resolutely going to ignore it like it isn't happening. At least that's my plan, and from the way he's hiding his eyes, hunching his shoulders even though she's nowhere in sight, I can guess that's his too.

"You can sit with me? Like don't worry if you don't want to, it was just a suggestion I guess..." he mumbles quietly and I roll my eyes at him and grab his wrist.

"Shapiro, we're not letting them get either of us down, okay. This was my decision and I'm not going to be made to regret it, and this is her fault and you're not going to be made to feel like it was yours okay?"

He nods at me slowly, his blue eyes blinking a bit.

"Right. Come on, we're like ten minutes late." I start to drag him down the corridor and he stumbles after me, his sneakers squeaking on the tiled floor behind me.

_/_

I shoulder the door to the improv class open and strut in. There's an almost audible click as people's necks twist to get a better look at me. Is a broken relationship something you wear like a necklace, or a stain on your shirt? Is it that obvious? Everyone else seems to think so, the way the whip around in their seats and watch me collapse into my own, looking for any outwards signs of my heart about to break. I don't think they understand that i'm no about to start sobbing into my hands. Besides. I don't think there's enough of my heart to break anymore.

It was my decision.

I look up when Robbie drops into the seat next to me. His head is down and he's shoved Rex into his bag. I guess his negative internal monologue is too painful to be voiced out loud today. I can't say that I'm surprised. And some things are best kept to yourself.

Sikowitz looks like he's about to ask me something, but I glare at him and he's sufficiently diverted. I don't feel like talking, getting up, pretending stupid make believe. Not today.

The others are still looking at me. I can almost feel Cat pouting and Beck glancing at me through his eyelashes while he pretends to not care. Well he does. Or he did. Maybe we cared too much, and then not enough. Maybe that's where we went wrong.

Maybe there's a whole load of other fucking reasons.

The class passes by in a blur of idiotic comments, Tori whining, Cat giggling, and Robbie and I sitting in silence. Which suited me just fine. When the bell rings he stumbles getting up out of his choir and yanks his rucksack onto his back so quick I flinch. He's out the door in less than a second, and I don't know if it's just me that catches the sorrowful glance at Cat before the door click shuts behind him, only to be reopened by another student. He's already gone.

The other kids filter out, but I shuffle some papers in my bag and pretend like I'm reorganising stuff so I'm the last one left. Beck doesn't talk to me, just glares kind of half-heartedly when he catches me looking and slouches out of the room with Andre. There was no emotion behind that glare really, and that makes me sadder. He wants to be angry, he wants to blame me for upsetting Cat, but he can't bring himself to hate me. Not really. We're like ripped pieces of paper in the breeze now, once connected but drifting even more and more apart.

Tori hangs back the most, her bag over her shoulder and a frown on her face, her brown hair pulled off of her face for a change. It highlights her stupid perfect cheekbones.

"Jade?" I grunt in answer.

"I heard about you and Cat." she says simply. I can't tell if she's accusing me too by her tone, so I snap my head up and look at her. Her face is arranged in a way that looks almost sympathetic, and her eyes are soft.

"Did you? Or did you hear Cat's version of events?"

"Neither. I talked to Kyle on sunday. I got his number of The Slap and called him up, asking about Cat. He's a douchebag. And an idiot for putting his cell number online" She smiles sightly, fingers fiddling with her bag strap.

"You did that?"

She shrugs. "I thought I should, you know, investigate. Besides I he rang a bell with me at the party. I think I've seen him hanging around Cat before, so I didn't quite trust her, I guess."

"Yeah, well I did. Until I realised."

"It'll blow over in time. The whole thing; her and Kyle and you and Robbie. It'll be fine, don't worry."

I shove my things back into my bag, paper wrinkling and my notes getting messed up. "I wasn't" I snap. Tori just smiles at me more, thin lipped and slightly strained though.

"Just checking you were okay."

"What is it with people and 'checking I'm okay'? I'm fine! If Cat wants that, I hope she has tonnes of fun. I really don't care I just thought maybe she should cut Robbie out of it- stop hurting his feelings, God!"

Tori takes a step backward, her fingers on her bag slipping. "No need to bit my head off!" Then she laughs a bit and I narrow my eyes at her. "Jade West, protecting her friends. Who would have thought, huh?"

"I'm not a bitch all of the time, Vega."

Her brown eyes twinkle at me. "I know."

She waves good bye then. Stupid since we're literally a foot away from each other, and walks out the classroom, her ponytail swinging as she steps. I hook up my own bag and follow her a couple of seconds later. The school is a jumble of noise around me and I head for the Janitor's closet determinedly, just looking for a place where I can bang my head against a brick wall in private. I can't deal with Tori acting like we're friends, fighting with Cat, tolerating Robbie and not having Beck all at the same time. I can almost see it, my little world shifting to the left, and I get the feeling it won't be sliding back any time soon either. I wonder where Robbie's gone, if he's hiding, no, _avoiding_ too.

* * *

AN: Yeah, I can't even apologize. I also can't seem to keep the Jori out of this fic either. Oops.  
I also can't work my microwave right now and i want brownie in a cup. Anyone wanna help?

Review, and I'll share you some brownie when I get it working? No, but please review/follow etc.


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